What is Team Building? What are the recommended activities and 8 key planning points to share at once?
What is Team Building?
Team Building 中文是團隊建立，團隊建立 It is the process of transforming a group of members with individual skills and from different backgrounds into a solid team, generating "cohesion" and "centripetal force" to work together and achieve the team's common goals.
For corporate teams, Team Building can promote team productivity and strengthen the multiple connections and close cooperation among members by clarifying team goals, solving problems, and establishing efficient communication.
For example, if the team consists of people from different professions, different generations, and even different professional backgrounds, there may be communication barriers due to the differences in backgrounds and languages, which may affect the time schedule. However, through the team building activities, the team members are able to become more familiar with each other, and they are willing to put themselves in the other's shoes, which will further improve the efficiency of cross-team cooperation.
Why do teams do Team Building?
One person's effort is addition, teamwork is multiplication. In a growing company, as the team expands, how to maintain a common goal, so that the team and the company can grow together. Instead of creating a gap between generations, we can bring each other closer through activities to understand, communicate, and share experiences and abilities.
Does Team Building work? Achieving Effective Teams?
Successful team building will allow team members to understand the corporate culture in the process of activities, increase the centripetal force to the company, so that team members think that they and the team, the company is on the same track, to the same goal forward.Work is not just a job, but also satisfies your pursuit of self-realization, and gives you a sense of recognition and accomplishment for the project at hand.
Indeed, Team Building can solve common team problems in a short period of time:
1. Meeting the Challenges of Organizational Growth
- Interdepartmental Communication Barriers
- Generation gap
- Decrease in corporate culture recognition
- Team goals are not aligned
2. Enhancing team effectiveness
- Transform individual competencies into team strengths
- Establishment of an efficient collaboration model
- Enhancement of problem solving skills
- Enhancing Team Innovation
3. Strengthening corporate competitiveness
- Cultivate Team Resilience
- Improving staff retention
- Strengthening the centripetal force of enterprises
- Establishing a Positive Corporate Culture
Building the ideal productive team in your organization requires team members to be willing to voice any ideas or questions without fear of being reprimanded or penalized. To create this environment, leaders can encourage open and honest communication and support more employees to have their voices heard.
What are the benefits and values of Team Building?
1. Identify team values
A clear understanding of the correlation between team values and company goals is the key to improving employee motivation and cohesion. When employees can clearly see the importance of their contribution to the success of the organization, their sense of commitment and responsibility will naturally increase. When members recognize that the value of the team is linked to the company's goals, they are more likely to be motivated to focus on the task at hand.
2. Enhance the team's emotion
When team members have a deeper connection with each other, the team's cooperation and centripetal force can be greatly improved, and the sense of trust among members will be more solid. Through the tasks in Team Building activities, such as two-member cooperative challenges and collective decision-making puzzles, etc., members can rely on each other in the activities, and it will be easier for them to communicate and understand each other in their daily work, thus promoting long-term team cooperation.
3. Concern for staff needs
According to Maslow's theory of needs, high-level needs such as a sense of belonging and respect must be realized through motivation. When a Team Building activity truly motivates the team and helps members to continuously explore their true inner needs, employees feel valued and cared for, which in turn generates greater motivation to work.
8 Key Points of Team Building Activity Planning
1. Objectives
There are usually two main directions for clarifying the purpose of an activity:
Entertainment: Enhance the staff's understanding of each other and the company's atmosphere, e.g. family day, garden party, sports day, etc.
Improvement of internal problemsThe following are some examples of such activities: facilitating cross-departmental communication, enhancing team cohesion, etc.
2. Timing
Activities can be considered part of employee education and training and need to be scheduled during work hours. Incorporate Team Building into quarterly or annual training, and try to avoid scheduling it on national holidays or during employee vacation time, which is more resilient when employees perceive the activity as utilizing their work time.
3. Participants
Identify who will be involved. In addition to team members, you can also invite supervisors or other department members to participate. Involve people the team will encounter on a day-to-day basis
4. Location
Choose a venue, either indoor or outdoor, according to the nature of the event, taking into account the convenience of the participants and the suitability of the venue.
5. Resources and equipment
Prepare sufficient activity resources and equipment, choose suitable props according to the needs of the activity, and design interactive and competitive activities so that the team can have enough time for interaction.
6. Event design
Design targeted activities to fulfill Team Building objectives, avoiding one-dimensionality and mixing competition, collaboration and fun elements to increase team member participation and engagement.
7. Activity Reflection Guides
Have the activity facilitator or lecturer, who ensures that everything goes smoothly during the activity, observe and record the key points from the sidelines, and have the facilitator lead the team in reflecting on the day's activities during the final reflection-led session.
8. Effectiveness evaluation
Conduct an effectiveness evaluation after the event to collect feedback from participants on whether the desired objectives were met and record suggestions for improvement to help improve future event planning.
Keys to Successful Team Building Events
Incorporating corporate culture into activity sessions reflects the reality that, like the real workplace, it requires a great deal of thinking and strategy exploration by participants. During the grouping process, the role of the group leader is to guide the team in integrating different strategic ideas, and to ensure that members coordinate with each other, distribute work appropriately, solve immediate problems, formulate strategies and overcome challenges.
Through situational simulation, participants have the opportunity to find multiple ways to solve problems, accumulate valuable experience, and enhance their reflective and thinking skills. With limited resources and in a specific time and space context, the immersive experience of the participants can guide them to apply the learning experience in the workplace in the future.
Lok Fu Wan will also plan activities according to the content needed by the company, and will understand the attributes of the participating employees and the current situation of the team beforehand, to confirm the core values and concepts that the client wants to respond to the needs of this Team Building.
Back in the day-to-day work, the corporate team can also keep an eye on the changes among its members to ensure that the event is working. Regular evaluation and review of the department and improvement of the team building direction can meet the needs of the team at different times, so that individuals and corporate teams can grow together.
Common Team Building Activity Types
Let's make environmental awareness take root and do our best for the earth.
Adding sustainable ESG elements not only enhances the image of the corporate team, but also plants environmental awareness in everyone's heart. From the individual to the team to the whole company, it not only helps team members to understand each other better, but also enhances employees' sense of identification and belonging to the company, stimulates internal motivation, and puts the concept of sustainable development into practice together through actions.
Let the participating colleagues relax and enjoy the sweat together!
More and more companies are creating a sports-friendly environment, such as establishing sports clubs, and some companies even choose to let their employees participate in a sports team-building program. Compared to the previous practice of letting employees eat and drink together, which had limited effect on increasing team camaraderie, exercising with coworkers is even more valuable, not only for improving employees' physical and mental health, but also for creating opportunities for communication outside the workplace. When we change into sportswear together, we help each other and learn from each other, which makes the team closer, and class is no longer a barrier to communication.
Let your colleagues put aside their worries and focus on their unlimited creativity!
Themed LEGO play and team building programs are the most suitable team building programs for understanding colleagues. Themes can incorporate corporate culture and other related elements, and through the process of building LEGO, colleagues can understand their views on company culture. Colleagues can utilize their unlimited imagination and creativity to solve problems together, and at the same time build up good cooperation and interaction in stress-relieving activities.
Let's discuss strategies, exchange suggestions and face the challenges together!
Start an outdoor adventure with your team! These outdoor activities require a great deal of team communication, requiring partners to strategically come up with solutions, practicing employees' strategic thinking and reaction skills, and an important way to enhance teamwork and mutual trust. In the face of challenges, each team member can learn how to quickly judge the situation and make decisions in the real world, and the partners are united to set off on a great voyage!
What can Team Building do? What are some suitable team activities?
For Lok Fun Bay, activities that allow team members to have a sufficient communication environment to learn from each other and compete with each other are suitable.
The most important thing is to bring all team members together, through group competitions and various activity planning methods to allow team members to cooperate with each other and enhance the effectiveness of the activities. Instead of throwing the whole team into individual activities, team members will lose their dialogue.
It's all about the partners, the team, not about what you're participating in. Experience a new challenge with your team!
What else do I need to know about organizing Team Building?
1. Is it Team Building or is it an extension of the meeting schedule?
In the name of activities and meetings, the staff actually have to travel to the site and feel physically and mentally exhausted after listening to long reports.
2. Whether or not to take up rest days
By scheduling events on holidays or weekends, employees lose time off and have to incur additional costs, putting pressure on what should be a relaxing event.
3. Team experience or endurance training?
Activities that are too strenuous or do not meet the needs of employees, such as physical training or forcing them to take part in adventure challenges, in turn make them feel stressed.
Such activities not only fail to enhance team cohesion, but also make employees feel disrespected and want to quit.
Team Building makes the team more cohesive---
According to theHarvard Business ReviewAs mentioned in "The Four Keys to Building a Good Team", there are four keys to building a good team: common goals, diverse talents, effective communication, and incentives.
1. Define team goals
Having a common goal and direction of endeavor can only lead to cooperation among team members. Spend your time in the right place to improve work efficiency.
2. Utilizing diverse talents
Diverse talents bring diverse perspectives and innovation. When a team is faced with a difficult situation, diverse talents can think about the problem from different perspectives and provide suggestions for better decision-making.
3. Establish effective communication
An open and unobstructed communication environment ensures that everyone understands and has a common understanding, avoiding unnecessary communication costs and conflicts.
4. Improvement of the reward mechanism
Giving positive feedback and rewards to your team will boost your team's morale and give them the courage to move forward to the next goal.
Successful Team Building not only enhances team cohesion, but also brings long-term benefits to the organization. Through professional planning and execution, combined with corporate culture and team needs, we can build a high-performance and excellent team. Team building is not a one-time activity, but an ongoing team development process that requires continuous investment and attention.
Ubuntu has two major brands, Lok Fun Bay and Motivational Sports. We have thousands of successful cases, more than 30 innovative activities, professional instructors and a professional executive team. Through the "experiential learning" corporate program, we can effectively convey our internal core values and social responsibilities, and at the same time add value to the employer's brand image, which makes us the best Team Building partner for you.